Paper detail

Discretization of Natanzon potentials

We show that the Natanzon family of potentials is necessarily dropped into a restricted set of distinct potentials involving a fewer number of independent parameters if the potential term in the Schrödinger equation is proportional to an energy-independent parameter and if the potential shape is independent of both energy and that parameter. In the hypergeometric case only six such potentials exist, all five-parametric. Among these, only two (Eckart, Pöschl-Teller) are independent in the sense that each cannot be derived from the other by specifications of the involved parameters. Discussing the solvability of the Schrödinger equation in terms of the single-confluent Heun functions, we show that in this case there exist in total fifteen seven-parametric potentials, of which independent are nine. Six of the inde-pendent potentials present different generalizations of the hypergeometric or confluent hypergeometric ones, while three others do not possess hypergeometric sub-potentials. The result for the double- and bi-confluent Heun equations produces the three independent double- and five independent bi-confluent six-parametric Lamieux-Bose potentials, and the general five-parametric quartic oscillator potential for the tri-confluent Heun equation.